Pour Se Reveillé, D'abord Mourir
by Haikoui
Summary: They pull the needle from his arm and pray he'll wake. Weeks later, they know that sometimes reality isn't reality for one person. Short-ish oneshot, kinda like a drabble, but sad. Implied D/A.


**Title: **Pour Réveiller, Tout D'abord Mourir

**Author: **Haikoui

**Disclaimer: **Inception doesn't belong to me – it belongs to Christopher Nolan's fantastic mind whose brain-children have made me fallen in love with them. *is obviously referring to Cobb and Ariadne, and on the side, every other character… except Nash 'cause he's a douche*

**Summary: **They pull the needle from his arm and pray he'll wake. Weeks later, they know that sometimes reality isn't reality for one person. Short-ish oneshot, kinda like a drabble, but sad. Implied D/A.

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><p>"Ariadne!" said Eames in surprise, opening the door widely, and Ariadne entered the hotel suite slowly, looking around. It was plush and cozy, providing a soft atmosphere away from the storm outside, and she asked hastily, "Do you have a towel?"<p>

"Of course, love," he told her.

A few minutes later, with a towel wrapped around her head and hosting a mug of hot chocolate in her hands, she watched the television with Eames and laughed at a couple of soap operas to pass the time, while waiting for Arthur to arrive. He did a half hour later, and the three of them clambered into his car, driving down the soggy roads until they reached a cozy, modest house with all its lights turned off. Ariadne felt a chill flow through her, and she knew that Eames and Arthur could sense her despair.

Maybe that was why Arthur began to ask her questions about Miles and his taking care of James in Phillipa back in France. "Phillipa's doing well now, isn't she," Arthur pondered out loud. "And James is well also?"

"Yeah," Ariadne confirmed, her stomach clenching as Arthur carefully opened the door into the quiet house.

Flashes of lightning streaked outside, illuminating the kitchen and dining room every so often. Arthur moved ahead of them down the hall that Ariadne had seen and remembered so vividly from the cage of memories.

Eames stopped Arthur just before the point man could open the door at the end.

"Let me go in first, darling," he implored. His eyes shifted to Ariadne, then to Arthur, and the message was clear: _Don't let her go in yet._

He entered the room, shutting the door behind him.

Ariadne waited, her breath stuck in her throat. Arthur took her shoulder and looked her in her eyes.

"Ari," he whispered. "It's okay."

"I just wish I could have stayed with him," she replied quietly, but bravely.

He opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by Eames' call from inside the room.

"Arthur, come in here. Help me move the body."

Ariadne took in a sharp breath and leaned on Arthur, who pulled her in and hugged her tightly, then led her into the darkened room.

He was lying on the bed, but now painfully skinny, his chest unmoving. His face gaunt and pale, his eyelids shut against the bright flashes from the lightning outside; he was the man carved from Limbo's deathly hands. Eames looked up from beside Cobb's side and shook his head sadly at her, his eyes conveying the loss of a good partner and a better friend.

"I should have stayed," she said, swallowing painfully.

Eames stood up from the chair beside Cobb's body and moved toward her, pulling her into a hug.

"Ariadne," he told her. "Listen, love."

"Y-yes?"

"Think of it this way," said the Brit. "At least, now, he's not unaware of reality. Now he knows that he was in Limbo, before, and now instead of lying in here and living through thousands of years in Limbo, he's somewhere else but knowing that this, _right here,_ is reality. And he'll watch Phillipa and James grow old and become rickety, like we're bound to be one day."

He was right. Glancing at Arthur, who'd walked over to Cobb's side and sat on the bed, looking at the extractor's sickly thin face, she nodded to Eames and pulled away.

"Where do we put him?" asked Arthur quietly, his voice tight.

Thunder clapped outside the house, and Ariadne shook her head.

"Leave him," she told them.

"What?" said Arthur, slightly incredulous.

"He'd want to be in his house," she said. "Someone's bound to come in here someday and find him. We don't have any part anymore. At least, I don't." She moved closer and looked down on Cobb's emaciated figure, stopping at his closed eyes. She imagined the sea colored eyes from behind his eyelids and was tempted to open Cobb's eyes on her own to see them herself, one last time.

But he was dead. All she'd see would be his lifeless eyes staring back up at her.

At least, in Limbo, she could've seen him, the one real thing there in the land of his subconscious. And she would've been real to him.

_Don't lose yourself,_ she'd said.

He'd promised.

And in a way, she realized, he'd kept it. He hadn't lost himself, according to his standards. He'd lived so many lives in Limbo. He'd lived his life, his own reality and what he believed in, the best he could. His promise was kept. He hadn't lost himself. Not in his reality.

The next day, Arthur and Eames saw her off on her plane to Paris. She waved at them with a limp hand, knowing well that she might not see them for weeks, months, maybe years – they'd go and keep working, whereas she wanted nothing with dreams. Not without Cobb.

So when her plane left, she pulled down the blind over her window and turned on her side, her eyelids sliding shut, and her mind went blank.

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><p><strong>Hope you liked it. Not much to say about this one.<strong>

**Review? :)**


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